My farewell milonga, El Abrazo – and a surprise lift to the airport!

Once again, I feel like I’ve been here forever, and I feel like I arrived ten minutes ago.

After a final early morning’s work, it was off to El Abrazo for the last milonga of the trip. This was once again at El Beso, my fourth visit this week. It was a wonderful way to end my stay …

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The El Beso afternoon milonga fun continues, at Tango Camargo

Following another heavenly Tango Champagne Club on Tuesday, and a delightful Perfume de Mujer on Wednesday, it was back to El Beso for the third-but-not-final-time this week for Tango Camargo.

Today I got a wonderful surprise in the form of an unexpected live orchestra …

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If you can’t beat the rhythmical music, join it: Perfume de Mujer at El Beso

Having a strict curfew to ensure I can be awake at 6.30am, my milonga options are now very limited. Almost all of the evening ones are non-starters, as they begin at about the time I need to be heading to bed.

The music at last week’s Perfume de Mujer was pretty much exclusively rhythmical, but my afternoon milonga options were that or– Well, that …

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I’m really going to miss the Champagne Tango Club

The shock to my system of having to get up at 6.30am yesterday for a week of working in the mornings saw my afternoon nap end at 7pm – so no dancing yesterday. However, that gave me a decent amount of total sleep, enabling me to skip a nap today and head back to the Champagne Tango Club this afternoon.

As an aside, there’s overlap here with some thoughts I had about time. Some might consider doing nothing more than working and sleeping yesterday to be a poor use of a day in Buenos Aires, but when the result is a day in which I feel refreshed and truly able to appreciate dancing, then I consider it time well spent …

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A day without dance! But a great deal of tango talk …

Sunday’s primary task was to change time zones – which is to say, prepare for a week of 6.30am starts as I returned to work for my final week here.

I resisted my favoured Sunday evening milonga, and instead had a relaxing day: a leisurely lunch with a friend, followed by a visit to the nearby cultural centre …

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Feeling like a tango god or tango toddler; rarely anything between the two

This city can make me feel like a tango god. When I get the right milonga, the right atmosphere, the right music, the right follower, the right floorcraft … when everything flows effortlessly, my partner and I reading each other perfectly, and I feel like I own the floor.

It can also make me feel like a tango toddler. When I’m at a milonga where the music is relentlessly fast, where everyone is spinning in high-speed circles, and I wonder what the hell I would do even if someone was looking in my direction …

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A dangerous visit to Perfume de Mujer at El Beso; go to dinner with Ale, but never travel with her!

A tango lesson we all learn rather early is that there are never any guarantees. You can go to the same milonga in the same place with the same DJ – even dance with some of the same people – and have wildly different experiences on different occasions.

While our head may know this, however, it can still prove difficult to convince our heart that we haven’t found the secret formula …

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Two-tier pricing controversy: One milonga entry fee for residents, a higher one for foreign visitors

Updated 6th April 2023

This was originally part of another blog post, but as there have been a number of developments, and it’s turning into something of a major source of contention between milonga organisers, I’ve now separated it into its own post.

I’ll begin with the background; then the various developments; offer my own thoughts (and sums); and share an opposing view from a friend …

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A tale of two milongas: Muy Lunes, with one success; and a perfect Champagne Tango Club

Given that Alessandra and I generally enjoy different milongas here, it may say something that we were both in agreement on the most recent additions to the list: Muy Lunes at La Comedia, and the Champagne Tango Club at El Beso.

The former was a nice atmosphere, and we both had a good sociable evening, but virtually none of the music appealed. The latter was a complete contrast music-wise, and was for me that rarest of tango species: an absolutely perfect milonga …

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Sans Souci lacking the king of sound engineering; a few tandas at La Comedia; and bed at 6am

Being Argentina, there are some complications around time. The country is located at a longitude that would properly put it either four or five hours behind GMT. But the place decided to temporally relocate itself some considerable distance to the east, and have a time zone just three hours behind.

Additionally, Argentina may or may not observe daylight saving time, depending how it feels. The national government decides this on a year-by-year basis, perhaps by rolling dice or flipping coins – but, either way, individual provinces are free to either go along with that year’s result, or adopt their own daylight savings policy …

Continue reading Sans Souci lacking the king of sound engineering; a few tandas at La Comedia; and bed at 6am
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